My Little Weekend Project: The Jake Paul Bot Thing
So, I was kicking back the other day, scrolling through stuff online, and kept seeing things about that Jake Paul guy. You know, the YouTuber turned boxer. Saw headlines about his fight with Mike Tyson getting rescheduled, something about a mascot, his old Disney days… just a lot of noise.
It got me thinking, not about the fight itself really, but just the whole spectacle. And I had some bits and pieces lying around from old projects. An idea popped into my head – why not try and build a goofy little robot? Not a serious fighting machine, obviously, just something fun, kinda boxing-themed. Something to tinker with over the weekend.
Getting Started: Digging Through the Junk Drawer
First thing I did was raid my electronics box. Found:
- An old Arduino Uno board gathering dust.
- A couple of small servo motors.
- A breadboard and a mess of jumper wires.
- A simple push button.
- A 9V battery clip.
For the body, I just grabbed some scrap cardboard from a delivery box and some hot glue. Didn’t want to make it complicated, just quick and dirty.
Putting it Together: Cardboard and Code
I started by cutting out a basic shape from the cardboard. Just a simple boxy torso and a base. Glued it all together. It wasn’t pretty, but it stood up, mostly.
Then, I attached the two servo motors where the arms should be. Used more hot glue – my go-to for these quick builds. The plan was to make these servos swing back and forth like little punches.
Next up, wiring. Hooked up the servos and the push button to the Arduino. Positive to positive, negative to negative, signal wires to the digital pins. Standard stuff. Powered it up with the 9V battery.
Making it Move (Sort Of)
The coding part was pretty basic. I just wanted it to do one thing: when I press the button, the “arms” (servos) should swing out and back, like a jab or something. I loaded up the Arduino IDE and wrote a simple script. Basically:
If button pushed -> move servo A out -> wait a bit -> move servo A back -> move servo B out -> wait a bit -> move servo B back.
It took a few tries to get the servo angles and the delays right. First time, the arms just kinda twitched. Then one swung wildly and almost knocked the whole thing over. Fiddled with the numbers in the code until it looked vaguely like alternating punches. Added a bit of decoration with a marker pen – drew a smiley face and scribbled “PRBLM BOT” on its chest, just for laughs.
The “Finished” Product
So, what I ended up with is this little cardboard dude sitting on my desk. When you press the button, its little servo arms swing back and forth. It’s ridiculous, honestly. It’s not gonna win any boxing matches, that’s for sure. It’s more like a desk toy, a silly moving mascot I guess.
Called it the “Jake Paul bot” mainly because all his news was flying around when I built it, and it kinda throws punches. It was just a fun way to spend a few hours, using up old parts and making something move. Didn’t cost anything except a bit of time and some hot glue. Sometimes it’s just fun to build something simple and stupid, you know?